Kissing Corpses Read online

  Rawdon's car made me realize just how wealthy he was. It was a Bentley Continental with diamond black paint and dark tinted windows. He opened the passenger-side door for me and waited until I was seated to close the door and head around to his side of the car. The interior was beige leather with red accent panels, and when he started the car, it purred quietly. I could hardly feel the engine humming below me.

  “Nice car,” I said.

  “There's a heater for the seat, if you'd like.” The leather interior was pretty chilly. I nodded. Within seconds my seat started to warm up.

  I hardly knew him, but I figured that I was safe with Mr. Rawdon Hale. If he had any intention of robbing or raping me, he would have done it last night when I was concussed.

  “Miss Harker,” he said, coming to a complete stop at a red light. He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Are you from this area?”

  “I'm from Denver, but we moved to Cheyenne-- Mom, Dad, Noah-- about six years ago. I went to college here.”

  “Is Noah your brother?”

  “Yes. He's still at UW. Sophomore.”

  “So your family is close.”

  I shrugged. “I'm close with Noah. I see my Mom and Dad maybe once a week. Sometimes less. I get busy.” It was quiet. The car was nearly silent when compared to my boxy, old Volvo. “You're from England,” I said, “Where in England.”

  “London.”

  “Oh, so you're really English.”

  “Not any more than you are American.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  Rawdon pulled up to the movie theater and came around to let me out. He was really playing up the proper gentleman thing. I liked it.

  The next show time was only fifteen minutes away, so I paid for the tickets and we headed in to the theater. We didn't stop for popcorn or sodas because I didn't want to miss the previews. I love movie trailers.

  When the movie was over, we walked to the car, talking about our favorite scenes and most memorable visuals. Rawdon opened my door, shaking his head as he marveled at the graphics. “And to think, a hundred years ago it was torture to sit for a photograph. Now they can make a movie camera zip around you as you stab a life-like dragon in the eye. Literally anything you can imagine can be put on film. Fifty years ago the cinema had so many more limitations. Books were the only place to find real fantasy!”

  I stopped without getting into the car. The past two hours with him had made me forget all about my smashed-up face and my pulsing headache. He was intelligent, cultured, well-dressed and handsome. He was everything I could ask for. It didn't seem real.

  Lady Gaga started belting from my purse. I groaned. “It's my room-mate,” I explained as I pulled out my phone.

  “Is that who was calling last night when you were struck?”

  I nodded.

  “Is that a song she likes or are you just fed up with her ringing you?”

  “Oh,” I laughed. “It's her favorite song. But last night it was fitting, right?”

  He smiled. “Yes. It was rather appropriate.”

  I hit the accept button. Immediately my ears were assaulted by loud sobbing.

  “Gen, calm down, what's wrong?”

  “He's a total asshole, Kendall. He expected me to sleep with him on the second date and when I didn't he kicked me out of the house. It's freezing out here.”

  “Where are you?”

  Geneva gave me the nearest crossroads. I put the phone to my chest to consult with Rawdon. “My friend, Geneva, some jerk guy ditched her on a date and she's stranded.”

  “Well, where is she?”

  “Do you mind?” I asked.

  “He might be an uncouth coward, but I was raised properly. Where are we going?”

  Geneva was standing on the sidewalk with her coat pulled tight, rubbing her arms when we got there. The house across the street was dark except for the flicker of the television in one of the upstairs windows. The white mustang was parked in the drive. What kind of creep drove a girl on a date and refused to drive her home?

  I got out and ran to Geneva, giving her a warm hug. It was my turn to repay the friendship. Her mascara was streaking her face and her cheeks were scarlet with cold. “Assholes die alone,” I said. “Just remember that. Come on. Get in the car.”

  “Whose car is that?”

  Rawdon got out and came around to open the back door for her. “Hullo,” he said, offering a gloved hand to shake. “I'm Rawdon.”

  “British...” Geneva thought out loud. “Oh, you're Kendall's hunky hero!”

  “I'm... excuse me?” he laughed.

  “You said he was alright. He's gorgeous, Kendall. You big fat liar!”

  “I'm right here.”

  Geneva hopped in the back seat. Rawdon turned to me and cocked an eyebrow.

  “She's got a big personality,” I explained. I was just glad that she had moved on to meddling in my love life for once. She could invent a romance for me if it stopped her from crying about that jerk Jimmy or whatever his name was.

  “Oh, shit!” she said as I got into the passenger's seat. “My keys are inside.”

  “I'll get them,” Rawdon said. He had just sat down behind the wheel, but he opened the door and stepped out. Rawdon took off the topcoat and the dinner jacket, stripping down to the extremely well-tailored vest and revealing a red damask panel on the back.

  “You sure he found you outside a sports bar?” Geneva asked.

  Rawdon approached the house. He knocked. I was surprised to see that he wasn't even shivering, waiting in the cold. A minute later the door opened. Jeremiah-- whoever-- the asshole, stood in the doorway. He said something. Rawdon said something back and the jerk stepped out of the way to let him in. The door closed.

  Geneva reached over the center console and turned up the radio. We listened to one pop song and three local commercials before Rawdon let himself out. He was holding Geneva's keys on their bright pink lanyard and he closed the door behind him. His cheeks were flushed.

  “Did he give you a hard time?” she asked when he handed her the keys.

  “We had words. It's over. Let's get you ladies home.”

  Geneva provided the soundtrack for the rest of the evening, recounting the exact details of the night with commentary. When we got to the house, Rawdon walked us to the door. He stopped on the doorstep and placed his hand on my arm to stop me from leaving as Geneva sprang through the front door.

  “Can I call on you again?” he asked.

  Call on me? He sounded like an old movie. I nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”

  And then, to complete the old-soul vibe, he picked up my hand and kissed it. His lips were cold, but then again, it was freezing outside. “Goodnight,” he said.

  “Goodnight.”

  I closed the door and leaned back on it. I felt like I could fly. It was rather nice for my ego, to have someone show interest beyond the obvious sexual desire.

  Geneva came out of the bathroom with a bottle of Sephora eye-makeup remover and a stack of tissues. She jumped onto the couch and sat with her legs crossed as she blindly wiped the drippy makeup away. “You,” she said, pointing at an empty spot on the couch. “Sit down. Fill me in.”

  I realized the next day, as I went about doing laundry and cleaning the house with Geneva, that I had no way to contact him, and he had no way to contact me outside of showing up on my doorstep. Most guys made certain to get some digits when they asked a girl out. At least it removed the to-text-or-not-to-text question from the equation. I had a hard time picturing Rawdon, dressed in a three-piece suit, typing anything with his thumbs.

  My headache had faded to a dull, consistent throbbing. My clothes were clean. My house was clean. I was feeling a swelling sense of accomplishment as I made egg-rolls and rice for dinner that night. Geneva came out of the bathroom with a handful of grimy paper towels and tossed them in the trash. She washed her hands and went overboard with the sweet pea moisturizer.

  “That smells great!” she said.

/>   “They'll be ready in a few minutes. Ouch!” I loved home-made, fried egg rolls, but I hated the popping oil that came with the process.

  We ate while she grilled me about Rawdon. He was still a stranger to me. I had no idea what he did for fun or for work. All I knew was that he was English and that he liked suits and visually stunning movies. She did manage to extract the fact that he had asked me out. This was mainly because I had nothing else to tell her.

  “My dear Miss Harker,” she said, mimicking a British accent. Poorly. “May I be permitted to court you?”

  “Shut up. I like it. He's a gentleman.”

  “Do you think he drinks tea?” she asked, picking up her plate and carrying it to the sink.

  “Maybe. I don't know. I just met the guy.”

  “He's rich. We know that. At least he has a hot car.”

  “He could live in that car and own two suits. Let's not assume anything,” I said.

  “Hobo in a three-piece suit,” Geneva said, “Better than the last guy I dated, right?”

  “At least the car has heat. You wouldn't get that in a cardboard box.”

  I was carrying my dish to the sink and Geneva was loading the dishwasher when the knock came. I dropped my dishes into the soapy water and whipped around.

  “Ooh, someone's excited,” Geneva said, nudging my arm. “Is it lover boy?”

  “Shut up,” I said, but I smiled. It was hard not to have a crush on a well-mannered foreigner. Right? I remember a Discovery Channel program once explaining that women dug accents on a psychological level because they promised genetic diversity for their offspring. I like to think that my romantic inclinations are more than biological programming, but you can't blame me if, once in a while, I get giddy for a charming dialect.

  The knock came again.

  “Well, go get it!” she said. “It can't be for me at this hour.”

  It was only seven, but it was dark out and UPS usually stopped delivering by now. I ran to the door, then stopped to calm myself before I opened it. Rawdon was standing there, dressed down in black slacks with a white shirt and black suspenders-- he would have called them “bracers”-- with a small bouquet of lilies in his hand. The top two buttons of his collar were undone and he was without a neck tie.

  “I know we didn't make plans, and it's fine if you're busy,” he said, “But I realized that I forgot to get your phone number and I didn't want you to think I was going to... blow you off.” The last phrase sounded foreign coming from his lips. I could tell that he didn't like how it sounded.

  “I am totally available,” I said, “Right now. Completely. Nothing at all on my calendar for the evening.” I had work in the morning, but who cares? He was cute and he had brought flowers. “What's the plan? Do you want something to eat? We have leftover egg rolls.”

  “I just ate, but thank you.” He held the flowers out and I took them. I turned toward the kitchen to find a vase and he stayed planted on the doorstep. I didn't notice that he wasn't behind me.

  Geneva wandered out into the living-room to be nosy and I heard her say, “Well, are you going to come in?”

  “May I?” he asked.

  “Yes. Come in. Shut the door. It's freezing out there.”

  When I came back, Rawdon was looking around the living-room with interest. I set the vase of flowers on the coffee table. “So, what's the plan?” I repeated.

  “Uh, there's a gallery opening a few blocks over. I thought we might go, if you like art.”

  “I like art,” I said, “but I'll warn you, most of the art here features cowboys.”

  “Cowboys,” he repeated, amused. “Sounds... kitschy.”

  “Some of it's quite nice. Some of it is pretty cheesy.”

  “Sounds like fun,” he said.

  “How long have you been here?” Geneva asked, butting in.

  “In Cheyenne?” he asked. “Three months.”

  She crossed the room to stand directly between Rawdon and I. “Thanks for picking me up last night, but if you hurt Kendall, I can be a crazy bitch. Got it?”

  He looked seriously back at her. “Message received.”

  “Good. Have fun!” She spun on her heel and bounced from the room.

  We walked silently to his car. Like the night before, he opened the door for me and waited until I was settled in to close it. When he started the car, opera played on the radio. He quickly pressed the dial with a gloved finger and turned it off. “We don't need music,” he said. “We can talk.”

  “Okay, so you listen to opera, you wear three-piece suits, and you drive a Bentley. What do you do for a living?”

  He stopped with his hand on the shifter and left the car in park. “Well,” he said. “That's actually a rather loaded question. I was born into money, which helps,” he added, “But most of my money now comes from a series of safe investments.”

  “That's working out in this economy?”

  “Well, antiques keep their value,” he said.

  “So you trade antiques?”

  “I suppose. I do quite well with bank interest, too, despite the economy. My accounts at the credit union were grandfathered. I get the old rates. You know, pre-housing market collapse.” He started the car. “What do you do for a living?”

  “Well, I majored in anthropology. Right now I'm working as a receptionist for a local law practice.”

  “But you'd like to do what? Become an archeologist?”

  “Oh. No. I don't have that kind of Anthropology degree. That takes a lot of science. I'd like to be a legal advocate,” I said.

  “Champion of the weak?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “Interesting.”

  “So you sell antiques for money. What do you do for fun?”

  “I like driving. Reading. I box.”

  “You box?”

  “Yes. I box. I started when I was about fifteen and it's been something I keep coming back to.”

  “And how old are you?”

  “How old am I?”

  “Yes. That's a pretty normal thing to know on a first date.”

  “Is this a first date or a second?”

  “Don't dodge the question,” I said with a smile, “How old are you?”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  “It's hard to tell. You look twenty, but you act forty-five.”

  Rawdon laughed. “I've been alive for twenty years,” he said.

  “Oh Jesus, I'm a cradle robber.”

  “How old are you, or is that not polite to ask a woman?”

  “Twenty three,” I answered.

  He stepped out of the car. I had gotten used to his chivalry and waited until he came around to open the door for me.

  The gallery was on the corner of an alley, next to a museum and just up the street from a bank and a Chinese food restaurant. There was soft jazz playing when we entered and people were standing around in cocktail dresses with glasses of wine. I was relieved that I had chosen dark denim jeans that looked a bit dressy with my scarf and coat thrown on, but I sorely wished I had showered between cleaning house and going to a cultured event like this one.

  “There are an awful lot of bronze bears,” I said, spewing out the first thing that came to mind.

  Rawdon nodded. He looked around the room, silently, sizing up every piece of art and each patron present. Finally he walked over to a pair of bronze sculptures of two women sitting on cubes. I followed him, glad to be out of the cold doorway. “This is the best piece in here,” he said.

  I looked around the room, but I found no piece to contest this statement. “It is.”

  “But I'm not shopping tonight.” Tension slipped out of his shoulders and he reached for my hand. Even though he was wearing those tight leather gloves, it still felt nice. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

  “Maybe one,” I said. “Free wine, right. Shouldn't pass that up.”

  We headed over to the bar. The server poured me a glass and then looked to Rawdon. “Oh, no,
thank you, Miss. I'm not twenty-one. He put a tip in the jar on the bar and we made our rounds of the room as I sipped on the generous glass of red wine.

  We didn't spend very long in the gallery. There wasn't much to see outside of prairie paintings and bronze bears and rabbits. It wasn't that they weren't well-done, it was that they were ordinary. I imagined that most of these images would be reproduced or mimicked for a line of home accent at Target. I was itching to escape Cheyenne and find myself in some place like New York or San Francisco. I imagined that those cities didn't showcase ordinary art.

  We hadn't parked far from the gallery, but even that short walk in the brisk November air was uncomfortable. It was a relief to get back to Rawdon's car and feel the heated seat warming up. I was telling him about a book I read when he started the engine and as we pulled out of our tight parking space, he told me about a recent literary best seller that he had enjoyed.

  “That sounds really cool,” I said. “I'll have to read it.”

  “Would you like to borrow it?” he asked.

  “That would be great. I don't think I have the shelf space to own too many more books.”

  “Sounds like you need a Kindle,” Rawdon said. “I just bought one last week. I love it, but I have the physical copy of this book to lend out.” He put on his blinker to head in the opposite direction of my house.

  “Are we going to get it now?” I asked

  “Is that alright? You don't have to be in bed by a certain time, do you?”

  “No. It's fine. I can be out a little later.” I was going to be tired at work tomorrow.

  “Good.”

  We left the downtown area where Geneva and I lived and pulled up outside of a large house with stone siding and a red wood panel below the roof. It was a new construction with a sprawly, tidy lawn. I followed him to the front door and waited as he unlocked it.

  The front room was a large, open, floor plan with a living-room and kitchen connected by mock-wood laminate flooring. Beyond the kitchen was a doorway to a hall that must have lead to the basement and other bedrooms. Immediately to my left was a built-in shelf that held a number of expensive-looking objects. There was a painting of a woman on a miniature easel, a pair of Art Deco bronze cat bookends, and a collection of hand carved figurines. There was a working jukebox plugged in at the far corner of the room. Outside of a few of these kinds of oddities from various eras of American history, the rest of the house seemed to be decorated with modern furniture that mimicked a Victorian style. The sofa was off-white with a wood frame and claw feet and the end table next to it had a marble top. A matching chair sat caddy-corner from the couch with a black fur throw pillow propped up in its seat.